Yahoo-Google Deal Advances — Yahoo Inc. moved closer to outsourcing its search advertising to Google Inc. after an initial test of the system yielded what the two firms deemed positive results, people familiar with the matter said. — A partnership could give Yahoo some needed leverage …

Something's Fishy About This Yahoo-Google Deal — Oh, please. An initial test of outsourcing Yahoo's search to Google showed positive results, according to an account in the Journal. Hold it; didn't that test just start this week? Wasn't it supposed to go two weeks?

20 (Rare) Questions for Google Search Guru Udi Manber — as Web search, Udi Manber has been working on Web search. Previously a computer science professor at the University of Arizona, then a senior vice president at Amazon and Yahoo's chief scientist, Manber is now vice president in charge …

How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search as We Know It — Google owns search for now, but as PM's senior tech editor explains in his biweekly column, the evolving nature of how we use the Internet has left an uncertain future for search—and it's all the fault of you and your friends.

Google tweaked search 450 times in 2007 — Google is typically tight-lipped about it the inner workings of its search business, but there are a few nuggets worth looking at in a Popular Mechanics interview with Udi Manber, the Google vice president who oversees search quality.

What's Going On With Red Hat Desktop Systems? An Update — Red Hat is well known as a supplier of server systems, so the latest developments with our desktop products and technologies sometimes find themselves in the shade. It's time for an update on the current state of the desktop at Red Hat.

Google News Makes Quotes More Discoverable — The Google News Blog announced that they will now display quotes within articles, when they think your query and the content warrants it. — For example, a search on Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, returns a quote at the top of the Google News search page.

A new reason to hate Comcast — As long as I've been a customer of Comcast I've been writing how much I wish they'd sell their Internet business to a company that doesn't hate its customers so much. But sometimes you forget, when the service is good, you just cruise along, happy and productive.

Best practices when moving your site — Planning on moving your site to a new domain? Lots of webmasters find this a scary process. How do you do it without hurting your site's performance in Google search results? — Your aim is to make the transition invisible and seamless to the user …

Alexa Overhauls Ranking System — Everyone's favorite web statistics whipping boy Alexa has announced a major overhaul of how it compiles traffic figures. — The biggest change is Alexa's decision to drop exclusive reliance on the Alexa toolbar for traffic data, with Alexa now aggregating data from …

PC sales advance despite US recession, says Gartner — Gartner has just released preliminary numbers for this year's first quarter PC market, and it reckons that worldwide PC shipments grew by 12.3% to 71.1 million units compared to 07Q1. The main news is that Dell — now back under Michael Dell's control — is staging a recovery.

Socialtext enterprise wiki getting social network features — If you love a good theory — of psychology, physics, economics, you name it — go work at SocialText. These guys live in their heads. That became apparent when I talked to founder Ross Mayfield and newish CEO Eugene Lee this week …

Brightcove: Paid Video Not Worth Our Time — Brightcove is discontinuing an option to have customers pay to rent or buy video, and will tell its publishers about the change on Wednesday. All paid video options will be zapped from Brightcove publishers' offerings on July 31.